Pets by Vickie Vertiz
A mash-up of public-domain footage from the Internet Archive by Kenji Liu.
Poet Vickie Vertiz reads the poem “Pets” from her book Swallows (Finishing Line Press, 2013), available at tinyurl.com/swallowsbook
Coelacanth by Charlotte Henson
A new poetry film by Rachel Laine is always worth waiting for. This one features a poem and recitation by UK poet Charlotte Henson.
He Wishes For The Cloths of Heaven by William Butler Yeats
Film by Gianni Marini; voice by Paul Buchanan. This is the poem also known as “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”:
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
According to the Wikipedia, the poem was featured in an episode of the BBC television series Ballykissangel, where it was recited by one of the characters.
Humming Bird by D. H. Lawrence
http://vimeo.com/61407931
In a blog post introducing this video, Nic S. writes:
I get such a kick out of people putting their creations out there for free non-commercial use by others. This happened thanks to generous Vimeo user, Equiloud, who has a clips channel offering his amazing video creations for free download and Sound Cloud user Flute Ninja doing the same. The reading itself was already up at Pizzicati of Hosanna.
Requiem auf Georg Trakl (Requiem on Georg Trakl) by Sigrun Höllrigl
This Swoon film is a production of the Vienna-based videopoetry group Art Visuals & Poetry, who write:
“Requiem on Georg Trakl” is a political movie. The death metaphors in the poetry of Georg Trakl are interpreted as visions of the deads of first and second World War. The movie is about the poet as a visionary and outcast of society. The artist stays lonely because he has another view of reality – he “sees” in another reality.
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
This is O wild goose da muller by Carmen PG Granxeiro:
Videoarte. Tres formas de escoitar. Tres formas de entender.
Videoart. Three ways to listen. Three ways to understand.
Videoarte. Tres formas de escuchar. Tres formas de entender.
Oliver’s most famous poem has been made into numerous videos for the web, most of them dreck. But I shared one other that I liked, a film by Justin DeWaard, back in 2010.
Ode to My Body by Scott Parson’s 12th Grade Class
This collaboratively written poem comes from Scott Parson’s 12th Grade Class at the Maplewood Career Center in Ravenna, Ohio. It was animated by Adam Rechtenwald from a design by Eric Stearns, and is part of the 2009-2010 edition — Peace Stanzas — of the Wick Poetry Center’s Traveling Stanzas program.
Cherry Tree by Robert Louis Stevenson
Stevenson’s dreamy lyrics juxtaposed with footage of a woman restocking a vending machine. Emily Tumbleson notes:
Footage taken on a Canon 7D. Poem by Robert Louis Stevenson from A Child’s Garden of Verses.
I am currently exploring the relationship between desire or aspiration, childhood nostalgia, and social or cultural context.
Landing Under Water, I See Roots by Annie Finch
A beautiful and, to my mind, highly effective book trailer for Spells: New and Selected Poems by Annie Finch, due out this month from Wesleyan University Press. U.K. animator Suzie Hanna describes their creative process in a note at Vimeo:
The film was made through a Transatlantic collaborative shared process. Annie sent her voice recording to me and I responded with clips of tests and animatics which I adjusted, extended or dumped in response to her reactions.
For the text of the poem (and audio of Finch’s reading), see poets.org.